Flash Eurobarometer 369 (Investing in Intangibles: Economic Assets and Innovation Drivers for Growth)

Kinds of intangible assets invested in. Reasons for investment in intangible assets and perceived barriers when making investments.

Themes: Company is part of a group; country in which the head office of the country is located; number of employees (size of company); year of company establishment; turnover in 2011; turnnover in 2011 compared to 2010; company has been taken over or has merged with another company or sold off a part of the business; percentage of the company´s turnover coming from sales in each of the following markets (locally, in company´s own country outside the area or region of location, in other EU countries, or in Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, other countries outside the EU); most important priorities of the company; percentage of total turnover invested in activities using internal resources (training, software development, company reputation and branding, research and development (R&D), design of products and services, organization or business process improvements); percentage of total turnover that have been invested in these activities; perceived length time of benefit from investing in these activities; investments that have been reported as intangible assets in the 2011 balance sheet (research and development, software development or other investments like training and design); reasons of motivation to invest in intangible assets (improvment of internal skills on the intangible assets, more rapid development of new company services or products, better economic returns or larger market shares, better relationships with customers and business partners, greater efficiency of internal business process, public financial support for intangible assets, regulatory framework of company´s industry); perceived barriers when making investments in intangible assets (accounting rules for reporting capital expenditure are difficult to understand, high costs, limited external sources of information or expertise, unfavourable tax treatment, limited financial support, regulatory framework of company´s industry is difficult to understand); benefit of these investments in terms of sales, profit margin, skills and qualifications of employees, market share and overall value of the company); introduction of innovations between 2009 and 2011 (new or significantly improved products, services or processes, marketing strategies and distribution methods or organisational structures and management methods; proportion of the investments made between 2009 and 2011 in the following intangible assets related to innovation projects (software development, company reputation and branding, research and development (R&D), design of products and services, organization and business process improvements).

Additionaly coded was: country; NACE-Code; preferred interview language (only in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Switzerland and Turkey).